Fade Out
by Missie2
Summary: A broken warp pad dumps the Crystal Gems on a ruined planet populated by forgotten half-mad gems under the leadership of an 'immortal' gem. If they have any hope of getting off the planet, they have to throw their lot in with a set of escaped pearls and their Jasper escort. With Pyrite the Everlast's entire force driving after them, it's not going to be fun or easy.
1. Chapter 1

**Fade Out**

Or as it's also known, Feels on Wheels (I just like that title too much to let go of it). Why yes, it is indeed a Steven Universe/Mad Max;Fury Road fusion. Prior knowledge of my Breaking Down fic series is recommended but not required.

…..

It started, as many cataclysms do, with pure greed.

The zoatox menace had been dealt with and Homeworld, along with its many colonies, were finally safe. But gem production had reached a peak, where there had once been two hundred gem individuals living peacefully on their own planet there were now millions, and they saw no reason to stop reproducing.

The planet itself was a waterlogged expanse of trees growing through the wet murk, spinning between three suns. Crude, but capable of supporting the birth of thousands of gems. The machines were altered for submerged creation and the growing gems sucked what nutrients they could from the water, the soil and the trees.

A humble society filled the planet, six townships supporting Kunzites, a handful of Emeralds and their respective entourages. They looked forward to when the last useful gem would be plucked from the planet and they could go back to Homeworld for a more comfortable existence. But just before the mission could be completed, the first in a series of earthquakes shook the planet and took out the primary warp pad.

At first, the citizens weren't worried. The warp pad was just a supply line, and in any case it wasn't the only one on the planet. They had their ships, they just needed to get the substrate through the next nearest warp pad to fuel them.

The trees had been slowly dying as the water supporting them became contaminated with gem production run-off, and the water levels lowered enough to expose their rotting roots. As the trees crumbled away, the full force of the planet's three suns began to make itself known. The smaller two suns were close by but the planet's orbit took them out of the worst of the glare for three quadrants every cycle. But the biggest of the suns glared down at them for all but a single quadrant out of every cycle. Without the trees to shade the water, the planet's lakes and oceans rapidly dried up, and without the water to support the trees, they shrivelled up in the heat and turned to dust.

Now, the gems worried. The nearest warp pad had been found snapped in two by a falling tree, and they lacked the resources to fix it. There was only enough substrate to support a handful of gems leaving the planet to go for help. A council was called, and the gems leaving the planet were chosen. One of them just happened to be the leader of the entire mission.

Word of their leaving spread furiously amongst the working gem encampments and the barracks. Those gems were the most vulnerable, working outside under the heat of the three suns and blasted by the winds that threw burning sand at them, scratching them to pieces. They suspected that the mission leader and the other higher class gems would leave and not come back, abandoning them all to their fate.

The tension finally came to a head when a Pyrite, one of a set that had been sent to root out active warp pads, returned from her mission alone, declaring that the warp pads were all dead and the planet was poisoned. She had travelled the entire planet, something that was said to be impossible without cracking. Sure enough, her gem was scratched but in one piece. Murmurs around the encampments called her the Everlast.

Pyrite whipped the lower class gems into a frenzy, claiming that her mission leader, an Emerald, had tried to save her own life by sacrificing the other Pyrites and that the rescue mission was the same thing. A riot broke out, five hundred soldier class and a few thousand worker class against less than fifty upper class gems. Even the remaining Emeralds were torn down in a heartbeat.

Pyrite seized control with barely any effort. The last few upper class gems were given a show trial and executed. Their property, which included twelve pearls, were confiscated and handed over to Pyrite. The township structures were torn down and rebuilt as a single enormous tower, and all vehicles were converted to adapt to their desert environment.

The Everlast recruited her generals from the most brutal and most efficient of the worker and soldier classes. They enforced her laws, harsh as they might have been, for the promise of grafts taken from Pyrite's own gem to patch their wounds and give them her strength. She gave them great rewards for their loyalty, a high shady place to rest one's mass, the best of the resources they could salvage, even access to the pearls, who were securely locked away in the Everlast's own chambers and rarely seen.

Life was hard. The sands scored the gems until they were hunched and misshapen. Long missions away from the fortress had a mortality rate that took out all but the strongest warrior gems. Punishment for disobeying the Everlast's laws was exile to the salt dunes. As time went on and the gems settled further into their existence, they forgot there was a universe outside of the sand and sun.

…..

They really should have known better.

The warp pad was cracked across the base, but it still _looked_ functional. They debated it for close to an hour, Pearl was adamant they shouldn't use it, Amethyst was probably just determined to use it to rile Pearl up, and Garnet seemed torn in both directions. In the end they let Steven cast the deciding vote, and since there was the season premiere of _Rusty Blades_ waiting for him when they got home, he took what he assumed was the fastest option.

They warped.

The warp stream was unstable from the get-go, it fizzled and crackled all around them. When it burst and bent off in the opposite direction they were just glad it didn't fling them out into open space. Up until they saw where it _had_ flung them out.

Sand. Nothing but sand as far as the eye could see. Even the distant mountains were made of sand.

"We still have the Desert Glass bubbled, right?" Pearl asked nervously, shielding her gem from the wind as much as she could.

"Yes," Garnet nodded, frowning visibly under her glasses. "This isn't Desert Glass sand, it's too coarse."

"This place reeks," Amethyst groaned, and indeed it did. Dry as the air was, it held an odour of cloying decay.

One look back at the pad that had plucked them from space told them it was beyond use; it was cracked even worse than the one they'd warped from, and was smouldering and crumbling into ash as they watched.

"What do we do now?" Pearl asked, looking to Garnet. They all looked to Garnet.

Garnet sighed, rubbed her temple, and answered.

"We walk until we find another warp pad or a gem that might help us get offworld. Let's hope they're not hostile."

Away they trudged in a silent, sullen line. Steven lagged behind, kicking himself for being so impatient. As they left the broken warp pad behind, he was more and more aware of how thirsty he was. The air was so dry it sucked the moisture clear out of his mouth, and the three suns glared down hard on him. The gems were unaffected, though it was clear the wind was irritating them given how much they were brushing sand granules off of their gems.

It was eerie how quiet it was. Even deserted planets had the sound of running water in the distance, or the rush of wind over valleys and plains. There was sound, but it was very faint and far into the distance, a sort of low rumbling and murmur. Until they crossed a third hillock of clustered sand dunes, so soft they crumbled as the gems stepped on them. Then they heard a light clanging sound, and wearily they trudged towards it.

Steven was getting desperately thirsty now, so thirsty he forgot to be frightened when he saw the vehicle. It was an ugly thing, long and segmented like a millipede, scored with deep gashes and rusty patches and scorch marks. Long spikes jutted out over the hull of the coupled trucks, and the main rig itself was armoured with thick plates. This was where the clanging was coming from, along with the sound of trickling water.

Steven was now so thirsty his feet half-carried him to the rig of their own accord. Garnet, finally remembering that he was there at all, pulled him back and the gems shunted him to the back of the group as they cautiously approached the rig. Whoever was manning the vehicle, they were on the opposite side.

They skirted around the back of the third coupled truck, Garnet in front, followed by Amethyst and Pearl, and trailing on the end, Steven. Their hands hovered close to their gems in case they needed to summon their weapons in a hurry. Their eyes traced the jagged edges of the spikes; even motionless, it was an aggressive vehicle.

But what they saw on the other side of the rig stunned them so much all thought of weapons fled their minds.

 _Pearls._

Five of them in all, possessed of the same spindly limbs, aristocratic face and arrow-straight posture as Pearl, but different from her and different from each other. They wore wispy scraps of white cloth wrapped around their bodies to preserve as much modesty as possible, exposed and barefoot in the burning sand. The one in the centre, a tall specimen with long blue curls, was grimly using the cloth to wipe clinging sand from the collarbone-set gem of one of the others, a shorter pearl with a lilac bob and pale yellow skin.

The other three were working a pump buried deep in the sand. The two working the handle, one with hair and skin white as a ghost and the other almost pitch black with dark red hair, strained to put their full weight on the pump, huffing with the effort. The pearl holding the basin to catch the water was a dainty bit of fluff with a cloud of pink fuzz for hair and a darker pink tint to her skin.

It was so incongruous to see them working at their task, as if they had been plucked from somewhere else and thrown into the wilderness at a whim, that they didn't take any notice of the gem making the most noise. When she suddenly tossed down the wrench she'd been using to knock sand out of the engine vents and stomped over to the pearls, they jumped.

It was a Jasper, huge and hulking and towering over the pearls. For a moment it looked like she wanted to do something awful to them, but the pink pearl merely handed her the basin and she threw the water over her head and shoulders, gasping with relief. The water dipped and trickled over the multiple scars and valleys were parts of her mass were missing. Her gem, defiantly winking at the sun from her bicep, was gashed and shredded; the water pooled in the centre where chunk had been gouged out.

At the sight of the water, Steven bit back a groan, but his stomach didn't do the same. It groaned audibly, and six pairs of eyes snapped up to see the Crystal Gems staring back at them.

The Jasper snarled, tossed the basin to one side and advanced on them. The pearls cowered behind the blue-haired one. Steven was pushed firmly behind the Gems as they summoned their weapons and prepared to fight.

But just as the Jasper was gathering speed, the blue-haired pearl dashed forward and caught her arm. To the Crystal Gems' surprise, the Jasper stopped.

"Listen," the blue-haired pearl told her sharply.

There was a booming noise on the wind, approaching them from behind. A thick, almost drumlike beat, laced with gleeful shouting and screaming. The roar of engines pushing it all upwards. It was faint, but it was getting closer with alarming speed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Fade Out**

 **Chapter Two**

Updates will still be a wee bit delayed as I have a trip to another part of Europe in the works and it's going to keep me busy. Once this hectic period is finished I hope to be back to fic spamming round the clock.

…..

The ground underneath them shivered with the tempo of the approaching mob, and the stranger gems and Crystal Gems stared at each other, at a loss for what to do. Nobody wanted to fight, that was for sure. Even as she dropped into a defensive stance, the Jasper rocked on her feet, glancing at the rig and the hill behind them with barely-concealed worry.

 _Somebody say something_ Steven thought uncomfortably. Whatever was approaching them it didn't sound friendly. _Why is nobody talking?_

He had just about gathered up the nerve to speak himself when the blue-haired pearl, whose hands had been frantically moving while the rest of her stayed deathly still, spoke with certainty.

"They should come with us," she told the Jasper.

The Jasper stared down hard at her but she showed no signs of changing her mind. The pearls huddled behind her seemed to relax a little, edging back towards the rig. Garnet and Amethyst looked at each other, uncomfortable. Pearl's face was inscrutable as Steven looked to her, but honestly he didn't really care so much. The thirst had returned with a vengeance and the sooner they were moving in whatever direction, the better.

The Jasper bounded away to the front of the rig, throwing open the door.

"Get in," she ordered them.

Garnet growled a little under her breath, but strode for the front herself, beckoning to the others to follow. The pearls opened a hatch in the side and crawled in.

They placed Steven between Garnet and Amethyst, but just as Pearl was climbing in the black pearl grabbed her, shaking her head and pulling her away. She didn't even say anything but climbed into the side hatch with the others. A sick feeling lurched in the pit of Steven's stomach.

"What the hell...?" Amethyst grumbled. "This is messed up...what are they doing back there?"

Garnet normally would have had some words to reassure them, and Steven looked to her expectantly, but was shocked when she kept quiet. She was staring out at the sand on the horizon, frowning, stress lines etched deeply into her face. Steven had never seen her so obviously distressed. The sick feeling climbed up his throat.

 _This is really bad_ his mind repeated over and over.

The Jasper had been hitting a bunch of buttons in sequence and finally pulled a series of levers to bring the engine roaring to life. The sand crunched under the wheels and the rig tore away at such speed Steven's teeth clattered. Numbly, he looked for a seatbelt and felt a little silly when he realized there wasn't one.

A screaming chatter next to them caught their attention; another vehicle had pulled up alongside them.

It was a scrappy machine and its riders were just as scrappy; a bare skeleton of metal bars and wheels with a fiberglass-covered engine tossing out thick rank smoke, ridden by two small red gems. They weren't Rubies, Steven knew that, but they were similar in size and shape, or would have been if the two red gems hadn't been so deformed. One had an overly large head on a tiny body and only one eye, the other had arms longer than her body and a misshapen spike-filled mouth.

The Jasper barely glanced at them, even as they shouted at her.

" **You're finished!"** Steven heard them yell. **"Pyrite's gonna grind you up proppa good!"**

They weren't attacking the rig or even trying to board, they seemed content to howl garbled insults at the Jasper. Within seconds another vehicle, as ramshackle as the first with drivers to match, pulled up beside them. These had some sort of plan, they ramped up a sand dune and drove there, nearly toppling over on themselves and held aloft with sheer velocity.

" **Watchus!"** they screamed to the first vehicle. **"Dusta dust!"**

The vehicle pushed off from the dune and clattered to the front of the rig. Both the ride and the occupants vanished under the wheels, and the blockage brought the rig to a crunching halt. It lasted less than a second, for the Jasper had clearly been expecting this. She hit an oval button on the underside of the dash and the whole rig rose about five feet off the ground. They hit the dirt again with a crash and were tearing away again.

Steven's thirst had been left in the dust with the broken shards of the red gems and their sad little machine. His mouth was watering now, which it usually did when he was about to vomit. He tried breathing through his nose and counting backwards from ten, but his mind was full of what those gems had done.

He stole a glance at Amethyst and immediately wished he hadn't; she looked just as sick as he felt. She was clutching the seat so hard it was buckling. He didn't dare look at Garnet. His mind lurched in another uncomfortable direction; Pearl was in the back of the rig with the other pearls. He couldn't see her and couldn't know for certain that she was still there. What if...?

 _Don't._

The red gems in the first vehicle were cheering, as though they hadn't just watched their friends die horribly. They vanished as the rig thundered through a gulch, only to reappear at the steep side. They were joined by more and more little vehicles and more of the red gems, along with a few green gems of a similar size and just as ragged.

A blast from the back shook the rig and Steven flew forward, saved from breaking his nose on the dash only by Garnet's sharp reflexes catching him. The blast was followed by a series of somethings falling on the hull, light as rainfall. The Jasper, gritting her teeth, swerved the rig violently and dug the spikes into the side of the gulch, covering the hull with falling rocks. Another blast rocked the rig, almost toppling it over onto its side. The Jasper leaned all her weight to the other side and the Crystal Gems followed in mute horror. It wobbled for a moment and crashed back onto its wheels.

" **Easyup on them blasters!"** Steven heard a gem shout from dangerously close to where he was sitting. **"Everlast wants 'em back flawless!"**

"Keep the wheel," the Jasper suddenly said. Her voice was like a gunshot. She grabbed Garnet's hands and threw them firmly down on the steering wheel before Garnet could even think to react. A cudgel manifested from her bicep and she opened a hatch in the roof and climbed out.

"Do you know how to drive this thing?" Amethyst asked, sounding close to hysteria.

"No," Garnet said through her teeth. She held as steady as she could but the rig was listing towards the side of the gulch again.

A snapping noise was followed by a hail of gem shards trickling over the windscreen and the Jasper climbed back down into the front seat, taking back the wheel and turning it effortlessly back on course. Now the gulch was starting to taper out and they could see what was ahead.

A canyon.

A canyon they were heading for at about 160 miles an hour.

" **She's gonna jumpit!"** a gem cried from above the gulch. **"Sendit back, she's gonna jumpit!"**

" **Gettin there!"** another shouted. **"Dusta Dust, grind 'em up!"**

Gems rained down on them from above but only succeeded in hitting the spiked hull of the rig and getting impaled or ground up under the wheels. The Jasper pushed the rig ever faster towards the canyon.

An odd peace filled Steven. He could make a bubble; he could probably suck Garnet and Amethyst into it in time, and maybe even the Jasper too, but even if he didn't she seemed tough enough to survive the plummet. He wouldn't be able to reach Pearl or the other pearls in time, but she was smart. She would probably think of ten different plans to save them all even before they dropped. Sure, she probably didn't know they were heading for a canyon since the rig had no other windows, but she'd probably thought of something...right?

 _Everything's going to be okay,_ he thought, giggling a bit internally. _We'll all be home watching Rusty Blades before we know it..._

The thought was tossed right out of him when the rig crashed down on the other side of the canyon, grinding its wheels furiously to pull the dangling edge of the rig from the drop. When it finally got the last wheel on the ground, it sped away, the noise of the following mob fading into the distance.

When they had covered enough distance to be considered 'safe,' the Jasper pulled over. Without a word, she climbed out of the rig to inspect the wheels. Garnet and Amethyst climbed out shakily, and Steven followed, still somewhat giddily calm.

The hatch in the rig opened and the pearls clambered out, followed by Pearl. Once he had seen for himself that she was still there and everyone was safe, Steven wobbled over to the side of the rig and vomited.

…..

The pearls pumped up enough water for Steven to finally slake his thirst. They stared at him as he drank, but didn't say a word. Their hands fluttered restlessly.

Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst were conversing in low but frenzied tones. Pearl was explaining something to them, and whatever it was it was serious. Garnet kept rubbing her temples and Amethyst kept shaking her head furiously. It was bringing back the sick feeling, so he stopped watching them.

The Jasper was grimly calm. She had finished inspecting every wheel on the rig and was now sharpening the jutting spikes, wiping residue from the blades that he realized was gem detritus. How many gems had died today?

The sun bore down on them hard, and the Jasper kept looking up at it and frowning. She called out to one of the pearls, the blue-haired one.

"How long 'fore tripcycle?" she asked as the blue-haired pearl stepped daintily to her side.

The pearl looked up at the sun and off into the distance, then projected a hazy image from the gem on her wrist.

"Half a quad, maybe less," she replied. "Mercy, we need you."

The lilac-haired pearl tiptoed over, glancing about her nervously. The blue-haired pearl's hands fluttered, and the lilac-haired pearl projected an image from her own collarbone-set gem.

"Nearest shelter is here," the blue-haired pearl said, pointing at a shadow on the image. "612 pelmetres on the cusp."

The Jasper nodded, and continued to speak to the pearls in tones too low to be heard. Steven strained to hear them, but gave up in the end. He hadn't understood a word, anyway.

He looked around. The Gems were still talking in earnest, he didn't want to bother them. The white and black pearls were sitting as close to the hatch in the rig as possible, not looking at each other, hands moving like butterflies, legs intertwined.

The pink pearl was sitting by herself under one of the rig spikes, wiping sand from her limbs, her mouth screwed up with distaste. She looked the most approachable. Tentatively, he went over to sit beside her.

She stopped wiping as soon as he sat down, staring at him with what he thought was alarm.

"Hi, I'm Steven," he began.

Her mouth opened and closed with no words forthcoming.

"Those guys before were pretty scary," he continued awkwardly. "Were you scared too?"

Slowly, she nodded.

"But we're safe now," he sighed. His stomach lurched when she shook her head, the water he'd drank sloshing around uncomfortably.

She pointed towards the gulch, over to the east.

"They'll go crossways, towards the ridge. It's longer but they'll catch up if they use burners. Tripcycle will slow them down but us too."

Steven gulped. He had no idea what she was talking about, but it didn't sound good.

"So...we could be in trouble pretty soon," he murmured.

"Courage will protect us," she said.

He smiled; gems didn't tend to talk in metaphors, but pearls were apparently more prone to it than other gems.

"Yeah, that's the spirit," he laughed weakly.

"She has to, it's her mission. She said so herself," the pink pearl continued, looking over at the Jasper.

 _Courage will protect us. She has to._

"Her name is Courage?"

The pink pearl nodded.

"The Everlast gave it to her," she said. "Probably wants to take it back now, if she can."

"Do you have a name?"

For a moment, she frowned, and it looked like she didn't want to answer. But she did.

"Gift."


	3. Chapter 3

**Fade Out**

 **Chapter Three**

So, hectic schedule is now done and I now have lots of free time for fic writing, and I intend to do as much fic writing as I can. Starting with this chapter.

…..

When Courage emerged from the earth, the planet was already in an advanced state of decay. Any water that remained on the surface was sickly green and foul-smelling. The bare skeletons of trees poked up through the soil, crumbling away under the intense glare of the suns. She was one of the last Jaspers to be hatched, and was thrust straightaway into the new gem society.

There were no sides to be taken; most of the old upperclass gems had already been executed, and the Everlast was putting in plans to sustain their lives on the planet. Courage, though she had no name at this time, was given tools for carving out shelters and put to work. She didn't question it.

All gems carved or built. There were those that got a reprieve because they'd offered to go on trails, looking for useful scraps of tech or clean water or that most elusive of things, a working warp pad. These trails were incredibly dangerous, it was rare for a gem to come back with her gem fully intact, and often there were gems that did not come back at all.

Courage had no interest in going on trails. They were for the work-shy, or the foolhardy, or the ones that wanted to climb the ranks to gain favour with the Everlast. Courage was none of these, she lived her life modestly. She put her mass to good use carving shelters, and in her free time she liked to collect little oddities she found in her digging; chunks of glass, crystal shards, bolts and cogs from long-destroyed machinery. She could spend an entire cycle looking over her treasures, turning them over in her large hands, scanning their surfaces for something new she had not seen. She might have been content to stay this way until the sand and the wind ground up her gem into nothing.

But then...

A clumsy gem had disrupted the ground during a dig, and the support beam on the main tower had been knocked askew. As a precaution, the Everlast had the pearls moved to another part of the tower until the repairs were complete. Courage just happened to be working beside the bridge at the time, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of the pearls.

She had never seen anything like them, beautiful and utterly alien, untouched by the atmosphere that was destroying the rest of them. Even their colours were more vibrant; the blue-haired pearl's hue rivaled the sky. Just as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone, but the image of them had been burned into Courage's eyes, into her mind. She had to see them again, somehow.

The first trail she volunteered for made it further than any trail had before, with only two gems lost on the way. She made a major find; an abandoned outpost full of fibreglass and sheet metal and engine parts. She was moved to a more comfortable chamber in the shelters, room enough for her to stretch out her mass without touching the walls or ceiling, a room she didn't have to share with the others.

After five successful trails she was moved again to the inner circle, just outside of the main towers. She was gaining a reputation for fearlessness, and squads bickered over her, each wanting her for their own trails. She accepted as many offers as she could, each trail was bringing her closer to seeing the pearls again. Within ten more trails, she had a squad of her own. They were a scrappy set of Spinels, Hematites and two half-baked Jades, but they followed orders and that was enough for her.

Little bands of exiled gems were forming in the dunes, scraping out a living for themselves as best they could, and they posed a threat to the trails, for they would descend on any motor they found and take it for themselves. Courage was feared by these bands, for she could dispatch them quickly with few problems. The trails deepened under her influence, the planet's gems made it further than they had even before the planet began to die.

The Everlast had a habit of bestowing 'names' on gems that found favour with her. Her second-in-command, a particularly vicious Hematite, had been given the name 'Spite' and her head engineer was called 'Drag'. It was rumored that the pearls had been named by her too, but the names were not known by anyone but the Everlast herself. 'Courage' was a good name, a badge of honour.

She built the rig herself, from bits and pieces she had kept from the trails, until she had a machine capable of withstanding the harsh atmosphere, the rough trails and the wandering bands of exiles. The cycle after she brought it back from its first successful trail, with no gem lives lost, was the day she was given what she had worked for all this time. She was given permission to have one of the pearls for a single cycle. She chose the blue-haired one.

Within a few parsecs of meeting the pearl for the first time, she knew she had to get them out.

…..

They moved the rig as soon as they were able, just a couple of miles down the trail until they were under an enormous rocky outcropping. The heat was steadily climbing, and by the time they got out of the rig to shelter under the coolest part of the outcropping it felt like the inside of an oven.

Once again, the pearls pumped up water for Steven and watched him closely as he drank. Their hands fluttered, and he wondered if it was a nervous gesture, like the way he sometimes hopped on the spot or laughed when he was tense.

The crystal gems still hadn't said anything to him, beyond a strained 'it'll be all right, Steven,' which he knew was a lie. They had gone back to whispering to each other, and they only ever kept things from him when the situation was really bad.

The Jasper seemed to be unconcerned, though. She had stretched out by the front of the rig with her eyes closed. The black and white pearls sat beside her, the black's head resting on the lap of the white. If they were relaxed, and they knew this place better than anyone, then things couldn't be _too_ bad...right?

He plopped down beside Gift again; she seemed to be the one most willing to talk to him, after all.

"So, where are we going, anyway?" he asked her.

"Crossways," she replied. "We got a map. There's a warp pad there that might be working."

"Really?" Steven gasped, delighted. He hadn't thought it would be _that_ easy...

"It might be working," she continued. "We won't know for sure until we get there."

"Oh. Well, that's better than nothing..." Steven chuckled, though his stomach dropped with disappointment.

"Our maps aren't very good. They got all messed up when we were yanked," she kept on, tone light as though she were talking about something pleasant. "It's all a scramble, mostly."

"Hey, do the other pearls have names too? We just call our pearl Pearl, it's confusing when there's other pearls around...I guess that's why you all got names in the first place, right?" Steven changed the subject before he got sick.

"That one is Mercy," Gift told him, pointing towards the yellow pearl with the purple hair, perched daintily on one of the rig's spikes.

"That one is Treasure," she said, pointing to the blue-haired pearl, who was pacing the floor of the outcropping restlessly.

"And those are Sweetness and Light," she finished, pointing at the black and white pearls.

"Those are cool names," Steven enthused.

"The Everlast named us when she smashed our owners. We hate our names," Gift said breezily.

"Oh, uh...Sorry?" he mumbled.

He was saved from more awkwardness by Pearl, slumping to the ground in front of them with a weary sigh.

"Looks like we'll have to stick with these gems for a while," she told him. "At least until we find the warp pad they're looking for. We have a lot of ground to cover."

"Gift said the maps they have are messed up," Steven said.

He was surprised that she didn't reply, but her fingers began fluttering, much like the other pearls had been. He'd never seen her doing that before, what was it about this planet...?

But it wasn't until Gift's fingers starting fluttering in response that he realized the little movements had a purpose. They were _talking!_

He was familiar with sign language, at least a little. In a playgroup he'd been put in at the age of five, there had been a little deaf girl in the Caterpillar room and the group leaders had taught them a few words to make her feel included; 'hello' and 'goodbye', 'dog' and 'cat' and 'hungry' and 'sad'. He recalled that he'd forgotten all of it and resorted to scribbling out notes for the little girl, because he'd wanted very much to be her friend.

These little movements seemed too small to make any sense, but clearly they made sense to Pearl. She seemed to forget Steven was there at all, and the look on her face was something he had never seen before, something hard to describe...

Suddenly, Gift pulled up her skirt (and despite himself Steven's cheeks burned) to reveal her gem, embedded on her upper thigh. A hazy image projected from it, blurred and crackling with static. Pearl's gem lit up and scanned the image, as Gift's hands called to the other pearls.

Treasure sank to her knees beside Pearl, bringing up an image from the gem in her wrist. Mercy clambered down from her spike and projected another piece of the puzzle, slotting neatly into Treasure's. Sweetness and Light projected theirs from across the outcropping. Side by side, they almost made a map...if you squinted...

But as Pearl scanned the images together and aimed the glare of her gem at the outcropping wall, the full picture sharpened and focused and turned into a real map. Everything was there, the canyon they had crossed, the outcropping, the riverbeds that had dried up, the valleys and mountains, and a half-dozen warp pads, marked out as broken by big red Xs.

Except one. Right on the edge of the map, on the third peak of a mountain range, one warp pad was still blue. Working.

The pearls were staring at the map, open-mouthed. Tears were trickling down Treasure's face and she made no move to wipe them away, if she even knew they were there at all.

"It really is there."

Steven jumped, because he hadn't even heard Courage approach. For someone so large, she was astonishingly quiet. She looked euphoric, before her face crumpled again. She looked down at Pearl, sternly.

"We can't let you fall into the Everlast's hands. She sent her entire force after five pearls, I don't know what she'll do if she thinks she could get six and a fully functional map," she said.

Some sort of wordless agreement seemed to take place between the two of them, because Pearl nodded and braced herself before Steven could understand what was happening.

"Sorry," Courage said as she brought her cudgel down on Pearl's head.


	4. Chapter 4

**Fade Out**

 **Chapter Four**

Sorry once again for the long absence, I've turned into a very busy person in the last while. I'm going to try and update once a week for the foreseeable future.

Anyways, on with the show!

…..

When compared with other pearls, Gift had it easy in the beginning.

She was newly created just before the journey to the planet, packed onto the ship still mostly blank and finished in her immersion tank in her owner's rest pod. She had been expensive, she knew that much from the start. Kunzite was the type of gem that attracted stress and turmoil (and made her own when there was none to be found) and when the work was done she just wanted something soft and pretty to look at and to dote on her.

Kunzite was almost always working, there were always shipments coming in that needed to be calculated and tested for purity, always machines running at half-capacity due to the slag in the earth, always broadcasts and messages from Homeworld being missed due to atmosphere problems. Gift spent most of her time on her own in Kunzite's chambers, waiting for her to come back. It was boring, but peaceful.

Kunzite was good to her. She said often, with a weary groan, that Gift was the only creature on the planet she could rely on. She came back at the end of every cycle and confided in Gift all of the little things that had bothered her. She brought in apparel and trinkets for Gift, shipped from Homeworld at great expense.

When the tide began to turn, Kunzite held on for as long as she could. She gave away her credits and possessions to gems she thought would protect her, only to lose them as those gems abandoned her or were smashed. When she finally came face-to-face with the Everlast, she only had one thing left to bargain with.

"You can take my pearl," she said, the desperate grin on her face making her look as though she had completely lost her mind. "It's a good one, very expensive. It's my gift to you!"

Pyrite shattered her on the spot, and took her pearl anyway. She liked the sound of the word 'gift', as was her way, and that was that.

…..

Pearl's form burst in a shower of sparks, and her gem dropped neatly into the sand. Steven stared at it, struck somewhere between horror and the giddy feeling of it all being a dream he would soon wake up from. It couldn't possibly get any worse...

A loud crack caught his attention and he turned, just in time to see Amethyst's whip catch the Jasper hard across the face. It left a mark, but Courage barely flinched.

"What the hell?" Amethyst growled, her stocky frame firmly planted for battle. "We had a deal!"

Steven's eyes shot to Garnet, and although her gauntlets were formed and ready she wasn't in a fighting stance. She looked unsure, and that in itself was terrifying.

The other gems were nonplussed. Gift's spindly fingers picked up Pearl's gem and gently wiped the sand off of the surface, and Courage turned on her heel to face Amethyst. She didn't even attempt to summon a weapon.

"It's for her own safety," she said. "She understands that."

Amethyst looked ready to pounce, until Garnet put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. A look passed between them, Garnet shook her head. With a disgusted snort, Amethyst put her whip away and stomped over to Gift.

"Give her to me," she demanded.

Gift shook her head and clutched Pearl's gem with both hands. Clenching her jaw in fury, Amethyst grabbed her wrist and prized the gem from her grasp, shoving her away with more viciousness than was really needed.

Sick at heart, Steven went to Garnet. She looked as upset as he felt.

"It's for the best, right?" he began with a hopeful chuckle. "She wouldn't have done it if it wasn't...and Pearl didn't fight back so..."

"I don't know, Steven," Garnet muttered low.

"Yeah, but they've been pretty good to us so far, so they must have a good _reason..."_

"No," she cut him off, shaking her head. "I mean I _don't know._ I can't see anything here."

Of course. It could always get worse.

"How...is that even possible?" she asked quietly. Even for the short confusing time he'd had Garnet's future vision, he had been overwhelmed with possibility.

"It's never happened before," Garnet told him softly, crouching down beside him. "Even when the most unexpected of things have happened, I've always been able to see something. But here..."

She took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes to look at him properly.

"I might as well be blind," she continued, looking out towards the blazing white sky. "There's something about this place that's scrambling my focus. I can't take in anything from outside the atmosphere. There's too much interference."

Steven struggled to find the words, but nothing came. Garnet had never been uncertain about anything, as long as he'd known her she'd always known what to do.

"Tripcycle's over," Courage called, throwing open the door of the rig. "We need to get back on the trail."

The pearls jumped to their feet, clambered in through the side hatch one by one. Garnet rose slowly and pulled Steven gently towards the rig.

"Whatever else happens, we'll keep you safe," she told him as she pushed him in the side hatch with the pearls. "You can count on that."

It was meant to make him feel better, but it failed.

…..

They sat in silence for a long time, by Steven's estimate over three hours on Earth. It was dark and musty inside the hull, it smelled like wet rusted iron. His back ached from sitting on solid metal, he needed the bathroom and he was still thirsty. These little irritations distracted him from how afraid he was.

The pearls were huddled together at the other side of the rig from him, even Gift (who he had sort of started to consider a friend). Their fingers fluttered, and now that he knew they were speaking to each other this way he felt like they were whispering about him, and sourly he glowered back at them.

The screeching from outside sounded distant, even as attackers landed on the rig right above their heads and were tossed under the wheels. One clattered by close to where Mercy was sitting, and since then she had gradually been curling in on herself until she had made herself as small as possible. The other pearls seemed relatively unruffled by comparison, grimly stoic.

When one of them finally broke the silence, Steven was so surprised he jumped.

"What?" he sputtered.

"I said, are you a Quartz?" It was the white pearl, Sweetness or Light (he didn't know which she was.)

"Oh," he mumbled. "Yeah, I suppose I am."

"I've never seen a Quartz like you before," she continued. "What happened?"

"Don't be rude," Treasure admonished. "Maybe she doesn't want to talk about it."

At the same time, they all stared at him, clearly waiting for him to explain himself.

"Well, uh..." he stuttered. "I'm half Quartz..."

All of their heads tilted to one side in perfect unison.

"What's the other half?"

Before he could think of an answer, there was a loud cracking noise and the rig tilted to the side. Steven and the pearls were thrown hard onto the hull, and just as he was summoning his shield a hole was wrenched into the side inches from his face. A pair of crowbar-like tools were shoved into the breach to widen it. A red face peered in through the gap, grinning with broken jagged teeth.

"Found 'em!" it cried, to answering screams of victory.

Two, three, four more gaps were torn into the hull, and the rig was slowing down as some force pulled back on it. Steven crawled over to where the pearls were huddling and formed a bubble over them all. Just in time, as the bubble finished forming over Treasure's ankle a hook was tossed in her direction. It clattered uselessly off of the bubble.

Amethyst's whip flickered into view and the red face vanished, the intact wheels rolled over another body. Under the rig, there was another crack and the hull lurched again, and again. A huge section of the hull was torn away, large enough for a gem the size of Opal to pass through. More hooks were tossed at them, bouncing harmlessly away.

With the wall gone, Steven had a full view of the forces chasing them. Not just small gems on haphazard vehicles now, but cruisers full of hulking soldier-class gems, half-tanks with flaming pipes carrying grim-faced gems near shattering point, and in one vehicle that towered over the rest was the gem that Steven knew on sight to be the Everlast.

She wasn't tall or imposing, or even stocky enough to belay some strength, but even from a distance she was intimidating. She stood perfectly still on a car that was swerving all over the place, glaring down at the rig with murder in her eyes. The cracks in her face and on her exposed body looked deliberate, like tattoos. Her teeth jutted out like knives.

"Steven!"

A shout from just ahead of him made him jump, broke open his bubble. Garnet was hanging on to the back of the rig's upper vehicle, one hand on the coupling hook.

"We're going to dump it, you need to get up here!"

It was madness. The gap between the upper vehicle and the storage rig was almost four feet across, and that was a hard jump for him even if the rig hadn't been moving. But what choice did he have?

"Quickly!" Garnet called. "I'll catch you!"

The remaining spikes on the rig kept the worst of the crowd at bay as Steven and the pearls crawled along the broken hull to the edge. As he prepared to jump, he spotted Amethyst hanging from the door, lashing at any gems that got too close.

Well, it wasn't going to get any safer...

With a deep breath and a short crouch, he jumped off of the edge as far as he could, which wasn't very far at all. Luckily, Garnet's arm shot out and caught him, throwing him into the back seat.

The pearls went next, one at a time. Mercy had to be coaxed and finally pushed by Treasure before she would jump, landing safely beside Steven. Sweetness (or Light) jumped after her, with enough skill to land gracefully on the tip of the coupling hook and clambering over the hood.

Gift jumped, badly, and came close to going under the wheel but managed to catch onto the coupling chain. A roar went up from the crowd as they lost sight of her, even some of the attacking vehicles pulled back, and there was a communal sigh of relief as she was pulled back into view by Garnet.

" **I want them back!"** the Everlast bellowed. **"Unharmed! Unspoiled!"**

The attacking vehicles lurched forward again, and Treasure jumped, deftly caught by Garnet just as a hook clattered inches from her face. The black pearl (Sweetness, it was probably Sweetness) hesitated for a moment, shrinking back towards the ripped hull.

"Come on!" Light called from the backseat, reaching out for her. "We're almost there!"

She ran, and jumped, and made it. But just as she was pulling herself into the backseat with the others, a hook finally found its mark and wrapped around her ankle.


	5. Chapter 5

**Fade Out**

 **Chapter Five**

… **..**

Their owner had been a Larimar, taken to the new planet as part of an Emerald's entourage. Matching sets were the newest craze from Almandine and Larimar saw no reason not to keep up with the trends. She ordered them in black and white, to match her own preferred colour palette.

She didn't do much with them once she had them; she mostly did what she'd seen Almandine do, put them in seated positions on opposite sides of the room and left them there. They didn't mind; with so little to do their spikes didn't bother them, and they could use gesture-speak freely as the lodgings were often empty. Even though they had never touched, they shared memory, thoughts, feelings with each other.

Gems who visited tended to touch Sweetness a lot more than Light; a black pearl was an unusual choice, popular thought was that such a bold colour on a pearl would be too harsh and clash with the surrounding décor, but it worked in contrast to Light. It only bothered Light because it bothered Sweetness; she did not like the attention, or the notion that Light was inferior to her because of it.

Towards the end, with the planet dying and the worker gems revolting, Larimar tried very hard to keep up appearances. The newest trend for pearls was a contrast palette, and as she could not go out and get new pearls to fit she decided to recolour the ones she had. She had just gotten the spray half-way through on Sweetness (she was supposed to be burgundy red, to Light's cobalt blue) when her door was broken down, her gem shattered and both pearls confiscated.

They were with other pearls now, all seized in similar circumstances, but they stuck together. They had never really been apart. When the Everlast chose one of them over the other, or lent them out to her followers, the pain of being away from each other was worse than anything Pyrite could do to them.

…..

For a brief moment after she was pulled off of the rig, Sweetness looked like she was floating in a sea of blazing white sand, a shadow suspended in the air. In the next breath, Light charged off of the rig herself and caught her wrists, Amethyst's whip wrapped around her waist and Garnet grabbed Amethyst, anchoring all of them to the rig with gritted teeth.

The scrap team on the other end revved their engines hard and pulled back towards the dunes, tugging on the cable as hard as they could. Courage swerved gently, hoping to knock them off track without risking the gems clinging to the rig, but they bounced back quickly.

Mercy had crawled under the seat and was stuck there, rocking back and forth, Gift's hands fluttered helplessly and her mouth opened and closed in panic. Steven would have done anything to help, but he had no idea what to do, and with no-one able to tell him he sat on the backseat in a daze. It all felt unreal, like a movie or some strange frenzied dream.

Treasure had gone to the front seat and been rummaging in the storage hull, and after what felt like forever (but was likely just a minute, maybe two) she emerged, grim-faced, with a long set of pliers. Steven watched her climb out of the window, over Garnet and Amethyst hanging on for dear life. He watched her inch her way across the whip to where it was wrapped around Light's waist, swing herself over to dangle on Sweetness' outstretched leg and turn over so she was hanging by her knees, working the pliers on the cable. If the situation hadn't been so dire, he would have been delighted to see such a thing. They were like a team of acrobats.

An order was barked from the Everlast's vehicle, he didn't hear it, but when he looked over he could see she was hunched forward on her plinth, gripping the side so hard it was cracking. Her army faltered, unsure. The cable car slowed, allowing the cable to slack, and the three pearls attached to it dropped dangerously close to the ground before they picked up speed again. Treasure was very nearly thrown onto a rocky outcropping, but managed to regain her balance just in time.

" **Unspoiled, you slagoffs!"** Pyrite roared at them. **"I want them whole!"**

Just as she finished berating her cowering forces, Treasure's pliers broke through the cable and they dropped again, but Amethyst and Garnet were ready. They both wrenched back so hard they tumbled across the floor of the rig, and the pearls tumbled after them, landing in a tangle of limbs.

Courage had been waiting for this moment with eerie patience. They had driven out of the dunes at some point and were now surrounded by jagged rocks. Courage weaved through them with so little effort it was clear she knew this place well. Their pursuers did not; some rigs crashed and exploded against the stones, others pulled back towards the dunes, unwilling to take the risk.

Finally, it was only the Everlast's truck in pursuit, thundering over and around the rocks with vicious determination. As the truck drew up close, Pyrite's splintered gem glowed and she pulled out a weapon as crude and misshapen as she herself was. It was some sort of grappling hook, with an edge the size of an anchor, and Steven's stomach dropped as it was aimed at Courage's head.

But just as suddenly, and with a furious snarl, Pyrite pulled it back. Treasure had clambered out of the window to perch on the rig's door, shielding Courage as best she could with her own spindly body. The other pearls leaned out of the window to hold her there, firm and unyielding.

The moment stretched out, Pyrite's weapon clutched in her fist, the pearls' unfaltering blockade, Garnet and Amethyst poised to defend them, the drivers of both vehicles fully focused on the trail...

...and then Pyrite grunted at her driver, a skinny ratlike creature with spiky yellow hair, and the truck pulled away, back towards the dune presumably to give new orders to her army. Treasure gasped out a held breath and the other pearls pulled her back inside. They huddled together on the back seat, staring blankly at the floor, not even moving their hands to talk to each other.

Garnet and Amethyst sprawled out on the front seat with a sigh and an exhausted groan, respectively. The tension was beginning to write itself into their faces, Steven had never seen them look so wrung out, not even when they had been searching for Malachite. He wondered distantly if his own face looked like that.

Courage, however, looked the same as she had from the start. For all he could see on her face, she might have been a marble statue.

…..

He woke from a deep sleep as the rig ground to a halt, nearly tumbling off of the back seat onto the floor. The three suns were diminished, the biggest one had dropped off of the horizon at last and the two smaller ones were sinking fast. This, then, was when Courage felt it was safe to stop.

Garnet and Amethyst were speaking in low tones to each other again, and sourly Steven shrugged them off when they tried to call him over to them. Courage was checking the rig's new injuries, and the pearls were in their little clutch behind the rig. He went to them instead, hoping they'd be willing to talk to him.

They were gathered around Sweetness, as Gift was gently trying to pry the hook off of her ankle. Steven had thought it only wrapped around her, but as he drew nearer he could see that it was actually embedded in her mass. It seemed stuck there, and what passed for flesh on a gem body oozed greenish blood in the space around it.

Gift tugged on the hook hard enough to make Steven wince just watching her, but Sweetness herself didn't even flinch. Light was on her left side with her arm wrapped around her, stroking her head, and Mercy was on her other side holding her hand. Treasure was holding her leg still, frowning almost imperceptibly. None of them looked up as he sat gingerly beside them, and he didn't try to talk to them. Not yet, anyway.

Finally the hook came loose, and Gift lobbed it over the rocks as hard as she could. The other pearls sighed in unison, out of relief or sympathy was anyone's guess.

"Um," Steven stuttered awkwardly. "I can help with that, if you want..."

The pearls' eyes swiveled towards him in a way that might have been considered creepy in any other circumstances. He knew now it was just curiosity.

"I have healing spit," he explained with a forced laugh. "I mean, that looks like it hurts...so if you want to I can fix it so it doesn't anymore..."

He really wished they would talk more. The unblinking stares just made him nervous.

"...it usually works pretty good..." he continued with more forced laughter to fill in the silence. "I usually use it on gems but it probably works on mass too but I never get to try it out so I don't know...and it worked on my friend, she's not a gem..."

He trailed off as Sweetness pointed her ripped ankle in his general direction. Under their watchful gaze, he licked his palm and gently wrapped it around the injury, praying that it would work this time. The mass rippled under his fingers and reformed, smooth and whole and only a little lighter in tone than the rest of her mass. The other pearls inspected the reformed flesh curiously.

"Thank you," Sweetness said.

He hadn't heard her speak before, and had sort of assumed she was mute. Her voice was softer than Treasure's and lower than Gift's, and about a million times quieter than Pearl's. It was nice to hear her say something.

"No prob, Bob!" he shrugged, grinning.

Ah, there was that look again, the head-tilted-what-is-up-with-this-thing-look. It was weird how they all managed to do it in unison.

"Steven!" Amethyst called to him from the other side of the rig.

"Coming!" he called back. He was still a little angry with her and Garnet, although he couldn't quite explain why, but it gave him an easy excuse to get away from the pearls' scrutiny.

"How you holding up, Steve-O?" she bantered as he made his way to her. She was sprawled across a flat rock, looking up at the darkening sky.

"I'm okay," he told her, sick and tired as he was. "I healed Sweetness' ankle, it was torn up pretty bad."

"You actually named them?" she snorted down at him.

"No," he retorted. "They already had their names..."

He trailed off, remembering what Gift had told him about their names.

 _The Everlast named us when she smashed our owners. We hate our names._

"Don't hang around them too much," Amethyst told him, mockingly stern. "They're kinda creepy. Almost makes me think our Pearl isn't so bad."

"I think everything on this planet is creepy," he admitted.

"Yeah, you're probably right," she sighed. "They don't act like any gems we've ever seen before, it must be this place. Good news is Garnet thinks she should get her future vision back if we keep going that way for another few miles."

It was so typically Amethyst to want to reassure him but have to bury it under a heap of casual mockery. It took a moment for the good news to sink in properly.

"Really?" he yelled, a good bit louder than he meant to.

"Yup," she smiled, satisfied. "She told me a few minutes ago. Then we might be able to find a way out of this dump."

Already in his mind he was making plans to drag Courage and the pearls with them when they did go home. Wherever they were trying to get to, they would probably be safer on Earth, and there was plenty of room for them there, they'd probably be happy to go...he was just visualizing introducing the pearls to Connie when Courage sauntered over to them.

"We need your pearl to regenerate," she told Amethyst, as her movements alerted the other gems that they might soon be driving off again. "We need to check the complete map."

Amethyst shrugged and reached into her shirt's inside pocket. A creeping dread washed over Steven as the colour dropped from Amethyst's face and her hand grasped at nothing.

"No, no, no, no, no..." she muttered, pitching higher as she realized. "Oh, no..."

"What is it?" Garnet asked quietly, though the colour had drained from her own face. She already knew.

"She fell out," Amethyst said, a high note of panic cutting through the atmosphere. "I dropped her."

The pearls' hands flew to their mouths in silent horror. Garnet gripped her own head and turned away. Amethyst trembled, staring off at the endless expanse of rock and sand.

And most frightening, Courage's mask of indifference had fallen. Her eyes were screwed shut, her jaw clenched in fury. She took a hard breath.

"Okay," she said.


	6. Chapter 6

**Fade Out**

 **Chapter Six**

… **..**

Pride was nearly an impossible trait to develop with the spike in place, but there were a few pearls that managed it anyway. She had been valuable once, and even with their world in ruins she could still be considered valuable.

Her owner, the Tourmaline responsible for funding the mission, had spent a solid fortune getting the pearl on the ship. She was in decontamination for ten cycles just so she wouldn't have to be packed away in gem form like the other pearls.

Tourmaline had recognized the danger long before the last tree on the planet crumbled, but thought the guards and bribes she had paid out would be enough to protect her, and she tried to put through the lengthy decontamination again before she would leave. Her guards abandoned her, her bribes were worthless, and in the end all she could offer in exchange for her life was her pearl. The Everlast took the pearl, as she had before, and Tourmaline lost her life anyway.

From the very first cycle in the vault, she was the clear favourite. She was better dressed, more polished and in better working condition than the others, and even as her expensive dresses were shredded and her polish dulled she remained the favourite. Perhaps it was because she didn't cower before Pyrite as the others did, and bore every pain and humiliation with a clenched jaw and grim silence.

Pyrite was a proud creature, for all her savagery. She liked to see the pride in others shatter. Perhaps she had been trying to shatter Treasure too, in her own way.

…..

"I can find her."

The sound of Treasure's voice rang like a gunshot, startling them all. They had been sitting in silence for who knew how long, the pearls using their fluttery hand language to talk among themselves, the three Crystal Gems mutely horrified staring into the sand. Courage had been prowling the perimeter restlessly, like a caged animal.

Steven had managed to keep the tears at bay, but once he heard Treasure speak he couldn't hold them in any longer. They were happy tears, but they stung as much as sad ones. He wiped them away with damp, grit-covered hands.

"How?" Garnet asked, looking from Treasure to Steven and back, unsure of who to go to.

"Trace memory," the blue pearl answered, rising to her feet. "We've been swapping traces since last cycle. It's faint, but I can pick up the trail. She's not far from here."

The relief made him feel faint, giddy. They would get her back. They wouldn't have to leave her here.

"How are you going to get back there?" Garnet asked. Steven could hear the relief in her voice as well, though she was still on her guard.

"I'll walk through the shale plains," she answered, brushing herself down daintily and adjusting the knot on her flimsy skirt. "The vehicles can't cross them, 's too rough. Anyway, they'll be way off course now. We doubled back to lose them."

"I'll go too," Gift said, springing to her feet.

"No, you won't," Treasure told her sternly. "Only one of us needs to go. The rest of you stay here until I come back."

"I'm going," Courage said suddenly, grabbing a blunt hank of metal from the rig. "I'm not sending you out there alone."

Treasure didn't dispute this, though the other pearls fluttered to each other in alarm.

"This squad can protect you until we get back," Courage told them, cocking a thumb in Garnet and Amethyst's direction.

Garnet nodded grimly, and Amethyst looked up for the first time since she admitted she'd lost Pearl. She nodded too.

"Shouldn't one of us go too? Just in case?" Steven asked, scrubbing his face on his t-shirt.

"We'd be better off staying here in case we have to drive the rig away," Garnet told him.

"Well, then maybe I should go..." he started.

"What? That's crazy!" Amethyst spluttered. "You wanna get lost too?"

"I won't be lost," Steven assured her with forced gusto. "I'll be with Treasure and Courage, and if anyone's injured on the way I can help...what if Pearl's gem is cracked when they find it?"

He could see the guilt hit Amethyst hard, and he regretted what he said. She looked back down at the ground again, ashen-faced.

"Anyway," he continued. "She said it's not far, so we'll be back quickly, I have my bubble and shield, I'll be fine...I can do this!"

Garnet sighed, rubbed her temple and finally nodded, though it looked like the action caused her physical pain.

"Don't dawdle," she warned him, sounding close to tears (and that scared him).

…..

After crossing three dunes, they reached what Steven assumed were the shale plains; a long expanse of hills made of loose, sharp rock. The hills were just big enough to shield them from view. Steven had to pay close attention, as he brushed up against them accidentally the sharp rocks left him with long, thin scratches.

Treasure held her wrist out in front of her, walking with her eyes closed. Courage followed close behind her; both of them ignored Steven, except for stopping every now and then to make sure he was still close by.

"So, uh..." he began, wanting to break the silence. "How do you two know each other?"

Courage looked down at him with a puzzled frown, Treasure didn't even turn around.

"Courage was one of the Everlast's best soldiers," Treasure replied breezily. "I was always gifted out to the best soldiers."

 _Gifted out...?_

He knew, of course, that pearls were considered property on Homeworld, no different than a pet or a smartphone. It was something he didn't like to think about too hard. It made sense that it wasn't any different on other gem-colonized planets. But there was something about the way she said _gifted out..._ something that he didn't really understand but it made him feel uncomfortable, like there was something cold and slimy running under his skin.

"I stole the pearls," Courage told him bluntly.

"No, you didn't," Treasure corrected, uncomfortably similar to the way Pearl sometimes corrected Steven. "I asked you to take us. We asked you."

"Oh, so it's like she broke you out of jail," Steven laughed.

 _Or like a prince rescuing a princess from a tower_ he mentally added, but that was kid's stuff and he was a Crystal Gem. He looked down at the ground when the glare of the sun hit especially hard, and suddenly noticed little splotches of green scattered on the white rocks.

It hadn't occurred to him, because he had shoes and Courage had boots, but Treasure was barefoot and her feet were probably scratched to hell. It didn't seem to bother her, she kept searching with her outstretched wrist, oblivious to the fact that she was bleeding all over the rocks.

"Are your feet okay?" he asked her, working up his healing spit. "You're bleeding..."

"It's not a serious matter," she told him, without even opening her eyes.

Courage looked down at her feet, frowning.

"Can't you, like, uh, make some shoes for yourself...? So you won't have to walk on the sharp bits...?"

"I haven't manifested in orbits," she answered, eerily calm. "I don't remember how."

"Oh..."

He didn't know how to respond to that. He half-thought about taking off his own shoes to give to her, wondering if it would hurt really badly, when Courage swept forward and picked Treasure up. She perched Treasure on her shoulder, which made Steven think giddily of a pirate and her parrot.

"You two look almost like you're about to fuse," he laughed.

 _This_ got a reaction from them. Courage ground to a sudden halt and Treasure opened her eyes, dropped her wrist. They both blinked down at him, owlishly.

"Fuse?" Treasure asked. "What do you mean?"

"You know, fusion," Steven stammered, realizing properly that he was alone with these two, without Garnet or Amethyst or Pearl or Lion to step in and help him if he was in trouble. "When two gems dance together and become one big gem."

Courage looked confused, an odd expression on her stoic face. Pearl did her head-tilt-narrowed-eyes thing at him.

"Pearls don't fuse," she told him. "We can't."

"But our Pearl does it all the time," Steven argued. "With Amethyst mostly...and sometimes with Garnet...and sometimes they all fuse into one giant..."

"That's impossible," Treasure gasped, though a note of doubt had crept into her voice. "We're not the same as other gems. We'd shatter. We're too soft."

"The Everlast says only corrupted gems fuse," Courage mumbled thoughtfully.

"That's nonsense," Treasure scoffed. "Pyrite is a liar, you know that."

"So is whoever told you pearls can't fuse," Steven piped up. "I'm telling you, Pearl does it all the time. It's easy, as long as you care about the person you're fusing with."

They walked on in thoughtful silence, Treasure balanced perfectly in the dip in Courage's shoulder muscle. Until Treasure suddenly straightened, and pointed off to the west.

"She's over there," she said, relief making her voice breathy.

'Over there' was just past the edge of the shale plains, a half-dozen soft motile dunes skirting the outside of the trail they had thundered across not that long before. The canyons and cliffs crumbled softly on the other side, huge and empty. Courage dropped Treasure gently to her feet, and she narrowed down Pearl's location to one of the dunes.

But she dug through it, and found nothing.

"She was here..." she mumbled, filtering through the sand. "There's trace memory all over this spot..."

Steven's heart plummeted and tears rose to prick at his eyes. All this way for nothing.

" _Looking for thiiiissss?"_

The voice was so raspy and ragged it was barely a voice, and the gem who possessed it was barely a gem. Skeletal, ragged, the colour of dry dirt and with limbs so out of proportion she moved with evident pain, she grinned down at them with black slimy teeth. In her one huge hand she was holding a large club made of what looked like bone.

In her other hand, pinched between her needle-like fingers, was Pearl's gem.


	7. Chapter 7

**Fade Out**

 **Chapter Seven**

… **..**

Mercy had been a barracks pearl. Under most circumstances that would have meant a brutal, broken existence and an early shattering. She was lucky that the particular barracks she belonged to were a kind breed; something about the soil they emerged from made them softer, gentler. But incredibly paranoid.

Apparently the pearl they had owned before Mercy had disappeared, likely stolen for another barracks. They were a lot more careful with her; she rarely left her box, and when she wasn't in use the opening was bolted shut. They were reluctant to take her out for any reason.

When they did use her, they liked to have her listen to stories of their battle prowess. They weren't a particularly battle-hardened bunch, so most of their tales were strongly exaggerated, and when they spoke of other squadrons they emphasized how reckless they were, how rough and violent they could be towards even their comrades. They often spoke with anger of their suspicions that their previous pearl had been stolen and most likely shattered by the other squadron. When they were moved to the terraforming project, they complained about the planet, how much harsher it was than Homeworld.

Is it any wonder, then, that she began to love her confinement? When her world was regularly reduced to less space than it took to stretch her arms, the barracks hall seemed enormous, overwhelming. The presence of more than four Gems at any time was frightening. She heard other Gems walking around, shouting, drilling and building from safe inside her box, and they seemed so far away. With so little to do, the spike rarely bothered her. It was peaceful.

When it all went wrong, her owners holed up in their hall like cowards. They sealed her box shut before the hall was invaded by the rebels, for all the good it did in the end. She heard each of them begging for mercy as they were shattered, one by one, and they found her box, broke open the door and dragged her out. The Everlast was amused by the squadron's begging, and gave her the name in memory.

All the captive pearls had their ways of coping. Gift kept no thought in her head for longer than a moment. Treasure found some strength in defiance and bitterly clung to it. Sweetness and Light had each other. All Mercy had was an instinct to make herself smaller, quieter, so she would not be noticed. It worked fine when there were twelve pearls, not so much when it came down to just the five. And some of the Everlast's commanders chose her _because_ she was trying so hard not to be chosen.

Really, the only reason she had lasted so long when other pearls had shattered was because the others took pity on her, and volunteered to take her place when she was called upon. Treasure had done this more times than she could remember. Even Sweetness had jumped in a few times (though Light never had.)

When it was time to go, she didn't want to leave. As awful as their confinement was, what was outside could easily be worse. In the end, Treasure knocked her out, carried her out in gem form and when she put herself back together, she was already on the rig.

…..

Steven's thoughts whistled through his head at dizzying speed, and for one giddy moment he thought the other Gem was holding an egg she was going to break into a frying pan. A crazed giggle was building in his throat.

Courage and Treasure stood firm, staring the Gem down. Courage's mass flexed with coiled power.

"You have no use for that," Treasure said. Her voice had gone curiously dull.

The Gem laughed, a hacking, painful sound.

"I may be broken but I'm not blind," she hissed. "This pearl is not one of Pyrite's. Where did it come from?"

"She was hidden," Treasure replied, folding her arms, her fingers tapping gently on her forearm in what Steven assumed was nervousness. "She's on the brink of shattering. The Everlast let us keep her, but she's useless."

"So useless you dropped it in the sand and came back for it..." the Gem's long fingers closed over Pearl's gem.

"She was my friend," Treasure shrugged. Courage's grip on the hank of metal tightened visibly. "You were there...you saw how many pearls were broken..."

The Gem spit a mouthful of grit out onto the sand.

" _I_ never broke any of Pyrite's precious pearls..." she growled.

"And yet here you are."

"And here _she_ is!" the Gem hissed, pointing a shaky finger at Courage. "Didn't take you long to climb to the top, did it? Pyrite was a fool to trust you! You should have gone to dust orbits ago! Along with that runt quartz..."

The Gem's filmy, flickering eyes raked over Steven just once, and then she seemed to disregard him entirely. A trickle of cold sweat ran down his spine as he thought of creeping towards her to see if he could get close enough to swipe Pearl's gem from her grasp. If her attention was focused on Courage and Treasure for _just long enough_...

"Pyrite won't thank you for returning her. She'll shatter you as soon as you drop your guard..."

"Maybe if I return this one...but if I return _you..."_

Courage stiffened, but Treasure was unfazed.

"She'll shatter you for having the audacity to touch me without permission," she replied flippantly.

"I won't touch you," the Gem spat. "You'll come of your own free will. Or I'll just keep this one for myself."

There was that awful crawling feeling of _wrongness_ again, of some sort of horror Steven didn't quite understand, along with the terror that they were about to lose Pearl. Courage took a hard step forward and the Gem shuffled back, holding Pearl's gem high above her lumpen head.

"Don't even think about it," she bellowed. "There's a rabble in the hills ready to signal for the Everlast's troops. You'd never get away in time."

Courage seemed to diminish in size as she stepped back, looking to Treasure for guidance. Steven shook where he was standing. Treasure stood firm, fingers flitting against her sides, before letting out a long sigh.

"Fine. I'll go with you. Give her to the Quartz," she said.

The Gem smiled, unfurling her palm.

"Of course."

Treasure touched Steven's shoulder to urge him forward. Courage hung back, helplessly, as they approached the Gem. Steven held his hand near his own gem, in case he needed to summon his shield. When she judged they were close enough, she tossed Pearl's gem into the sand just past Steven's head. He went scrambling after it, and the Gem lurched forward to grab Treasure by the arm.

Everything happened so fast. Several bangs rang out around the hills and engines in the distance roared in response. Pearl's gem burst into life before he could get to it and she came out with her spear already drawn, hurling it straight at the stranger Gem's face. Treasure ducked, as she had clearly known this was going to happen, and rolled away towards Courage. Pearl's spear found its mark in the Gem's eye as the hunk of metal Courage had been wielding took out her torso. She exploded, just as other misshapen gems started scrambling down the outcroppings.

Pearl grabbed Steven's arm without a word and dragged him away, following Courage and Treasure who were tearing back towards the shale plains. They dipped in and around the jagged hillocks so fast it was dizzying, and Steven's arms were scraped bloody by the time the rig was in view.

"Start it up!" Courage roared, as the gems waiting for them spotted them and snapped to attention. The rig's engine rumbled in the next second and the pearls piled into the back.

Garnet and Amethyst had never looked so relieved in their lives to see Pearl and Steven back safe. (Amethyst looked on the verge of tears.) But Pearl spoke not a word to either of them, and as Steven was sitting beside her he could feel her trembling.

"Where's Mercy?" Treasure suddenly asked.

The rig had just been pulling out and it ground to a halt. Treasure glared at the other pearls, snapping at them furiously with her hands.

"She was in the rig," Gift spoke aloud. "She's been in here since you left..."

"She's not here now!" Treasure cried.

The ground beneath them was beginning to rumble with the oncoming war party. Somehow it seemed even bigger now than it had been before. They needed to leave, and soon, but Treasure threw open the door of the rig.

"They'll be on us any parsec!" Courage growled.

"We're not leaving without her!" Treasure shot back, jumping down. Sweetness and Light joined her a moment later, and within a few nail-biting, agonizing seconds they were back, carrying Mercy with them. She was rigid and curled in on herself, staring at nothing. They fumbled getting her into the rig, costing them even more precious time. As they finally sped away on the trail, the first vehicles were visibly gaining on them.

With a sinking heart, Steven saw that the Everlast's troops were much bigger than they had been; a number of vehicles and gems so badly malformed they looked on the edge of exploding. Pyrite was chasing them with renewed vigor, her own truck was tearing ahead of the crowd at blinding speed. It was clear, she knew there was another pearl on the rig.

A vanguard jumped ahead of Pyrite, boxing in the rig against the steep gorge away from the dunes. The gems onboard were barely hanging on, two of them fell off and were crushed under the wheels of the vehicles behind, and they didn't slow even a little. A joyful shout rang out from behind them as a small motor charged off of a rock-face directly onto the rig, exploding and taking two of the protective spikes with it.

Courage's fists gripped the wheel so hard it groaned, staring grimly ahead. Garnet positioned herself between the door and Steven, gauntlets at the ready but at a complete loss for where to aim them. The pearls huddled together, Mercy at the centre, rocking and moaning in despair. They were completely surrounded. It was finished...

...wasn't it?

 _I can make a bubble. I can make one big enough for us all. I can do it._

But just as he was summoning his bubble, whatever shock that had been holding Pearl back seemed to wear off and she snapped back into strategist mode. She slid into the seat ahead, beside Amethyst, and the two of them came to a wordless agreement.

Their dance was barely a dance, they swung out onto the roof of the rig on opposite sides, dodging debris and magnetic hooks to come together. They spun once, together, dipped and then Opal was precariously balanced on the roof. There was an audible gasp from all around them.

Opal spun around to anchor her foot on the bonnet of the rig, wrapped one giant arm around the roof of the car and drew her bow. Her arrows blasted the vehicles blocking them to shreds, knocking shrapnel into the gems behind. A hook wrapped around her neck and she yanked the chain, smashing the gems on the other end into the outcropping. The other motors pulled back, though Pyrite urged them to attack. It was clear they had never seen a fusion before; they were lost, and Pyrite for once couldn't guide them.

Opal fired at Pyrite's truck, but she wrenched the wheel at the last minute and the truck caught the blow on the wheel, flipping it and smashing the gems inside. Pyrite tumbled out, mostly unhurt but roaring in fury. The wheels of hundreds of vehicles screamed as they skidded to a stop.

The rig trundled out through the thinning gap in the gorge and Opal's last action before she split was to fire at the wall, bringing down a hail of boulders to block the way behind them.

…..

The rig kept going for at least another mile before it puttered to a slow stop. Steven threw open the door and lurched out into the sand, and vomited hard. He felt weak and exhausted, and nobody else looked to be in any better shape. They were slumped across the seats of the rig, completely drained. And yet...

The pearls were as ragged as could be, and yet something in their faces had changed. Mercy had stopped rocking. And Treasure was glancing from Amethyst and Pearl to Courage and back again, lost in thought.


	8. Chapter 8

**Fade Out**

 **Chapter Eight**

… **..**

Apologies for the long wait on this chapter, I'm working hard to get caught up on all my multiple chapter fics but with two international trips coming up and more jobs on offer I'm very busy so updates are a touch sporadic. Please keep the reviews coming, they generally grab that last little bit of motivation in me to update when I have free time. Doesn't even have to be a good review, I can spite write!

…..

Courage had worked most of her lifespan trying to get to the level where she could meet the pearls.

Once she was finally there, she wanted to be anywhere else.

From below, they had looked perfect, stunningly beautiful and pristine surrounded by the dust and decay of the outside. When Pyrite took them out of the vault to display them to Courage, she towered over them and noted with dismay that although they were no less beautiful, they had been damaged.

"Quite a sight, aren't they?" Pyrite leered, slapping Courage's bicep amiably. "Pick whichever one you want, you have a whole cycle."

How could she pick one? The little purple one was trembling, half-hiding behind the blue one. The pink one's eyes darted around the room, not settling on anything for more than a parsec. The black and white ones had one arm around the other's waist, staring down at the floor. And the blue one...

The blue one was staring directly at Courage with clear disgust. Small and brittle as she was, and vulnerable half-dressed and locked away as she was presented, she had a formidable dignity. She was the only pearl who didn't seem afraid.

"That one, please," Courage asked meekly, pointing to the blue pearl. She didn't miss that barely-there sigh of relief from the others.

"Good choice, that one's my favourite too," Pyrite cackled, grabbing the blue pearl's arm and dragging her into a room across from the vault.

Courage followed them into the small chamber. It was barely a room, not much more than a cell. The only furnishings were a wide, decrepit rest pod and an old isotope lamp. Courage gulped looking at the rest pod; it was clear why it was the only piece of furniture.

"Have fun," Pyrite shot off carelessly, closing over the door and locking it.

The blue pearl sat gingerly on the edge of the rest pod. Courage lingered near the door, uncomfortable and edgy. The pearl wouldn't even look at her as she reached for the knot holding her skirt together.

"N-no, you don't have to," Courage stammered, flinching back as the pearl shot her a hard look.

"Where do you want me, then?" the pearl asked. Her tone could have cut glass.

"Nowhere," Courage replied, shaking her head. "I don't know...I'm sorry..."

The pearl's expression softened, just a little, and she tilted her head quizzically.

"Why did you ask for me then?"

"I don't really know," Courage sighed. "I thought...I thought it would be different..."

"Different?"

"I just wanted to talk to you for a little while. I didn't want anything else."

The pearl's body relaxed, she exhaled heavily. She crossed her legs, beckoned for Courage to sit with her on the pod. Courage sat down as carefully as she could manage, never feeling so large and clumsy as in the company of a creature so petite and graceful.

"Nobody comes up here to talk to us," the pearl told her, sternly but not unkindly. "Pyrite doesn't keep us around for our conversational skills. What did you think was going to happen?"

"I didn't think," Courage answered. "I just...did. For long enough that I was allowed up here."

"She trusts you," the pearl said, eyes narrowed. "You're loyal. Or she wouldn't let you up here."

"I didn't set out to please her," said Courage. "It just happened that way."

"How old are you?"

"270 orbits."

The pearl sighed, looked away. Courage knew she was probably the youngest general Pyrite had ever brought up to the pearl vault.

"Let me advise you then; don't let on that you didn't use me the way she expected you to," the pearl told her. "If she finds out you came up here just to talk, she'll have you shattered. If she brings you up here again, choose one of the others. She doesn't like it when the generals play favourites."

"I'm sorry," Courage said helplessly, clenching her giant hands. "I'm so sorry."

"Not your doing," the pearl said flippantly, tossing her long curls over one shoulder. "But it would be best for both of us to pretend you're just like them."

They talked through to the dawn of the next cycle, and Courage just about got a name out of her towards the end; Treasure. When they heard Pyrite's footsteps approaching the vault, Treasure retied her flimsy bodice and skirt to make herself look used; Courage's stomach dropped watching her do this with weary practiced ease.

The next time she was brought to the vault, she picked Mercy, and spent most of that cycle trying to get her to stop rocking on the spot. When she picked Sweetness, she couldn't get a single word out of her. Light was just as mute, except sometimes Light nodded or shook her head to questions. She had more success with Gift, who was happy to talk but only about nonsense subjects. After every session the pearls readjusted their clothes to make it look as though Courage had taken full advantage.

She started bringing things with her to the vault, objects from her collection. Gift and Mercy were the most taken with these little trinkets, and the stories Courage had to go with them. They got a smile at most out of Sweetness and Light, which was a triumph in itself. Treasure mostly ignored them in favour of serious conversation; what general had been shattered recently, water cells drying up in the east, bits of talk overheard in the vault and on the road.

Courage entertained the idea of breaking them out. They were starting to react to her presence with palpable relief, and that wouldn't go unnoticed by Pyrite for long. She and Treasure talked about hypothetical plans, what they would do, where they would go, who they could trust, all the while thinking it was a pipe dream, that it would never happen.

Then Courage arrived at the vault for her regular session and found that Treasure wasn't there.

"She's regenerating," Gift told her in the safety of the locked room. "Sneaks was too rough."

That was the last straw.

…..

The Crystal Gems were doing their whole 'talk-quietly-in-the-corner-to-spare-Steven's-feelings bit, while the pearls huddled in the shadow of what was left of the rig, hands fluttering at breakneck speed.

It didn't annoy him this time; something in the air had changed. The pearls seemed hopeful and not just desperate. Pearl had accepted Amethyst's apology with good grace and they were actually smiling. And Courage, whose face had been fixed statue-like in an expression of stoicism, was sitting on a rock looking at her hands, gentle puzzlement etched across her features.

Suddenly, the pearls all got up in one fluid movement, like they were all one entity, and marched over to the Crystal Gems.

"We want to try fusing," Treasure said. It came out almost as a command, and the other pearls nodded.

"Are you sure?" Pearl asked them, frowning, scratching at the centre of her gem.

"Very sure," Treasure answered. "We didn't think pearls could fuse. Now that we know you can, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able."

"There is one reason," said Pearl. Her eyes darted nervously to Garnet, Amethyst and back. "I've been fusing for a long time and I'm used to it, but my spike was removed. If you try to fuse with it in, I'm not sure what'll happen..."

 _Spike?_

"Spike?" Amethyst echoed Steven's thoughts.

"Our spikes were removed too," Gift piped up.

"Pyrite needed the extra charge from them so she had them taken out," Treasure explained.

"Oh," Pearl said. She looked oddly relieved. "Well then, there's probably nothing stopping you..."

"You can't just fuse with anyone," Garnet told them. "You need to have a close connection with the other gem, otherwise your fusion will be unstable. It could slow us down..."

"We volunteer!" Sweetness and Light said suddenly, each raising the arm that wasn't wrapped around the others' waist.

"...oh, right then. Well, to start, you get into position..."

Garnet took them through the fusing process in painfully thorough detail, but all it really took was two spins and the pearls vanished into each other, leaving a new gem in their place.

She...didn't look all that different really. Her skin was mottled with swirls of Light's white palette seeping into Sweetness' rich dark tone, her hair was burnished to pale pink with darkened tips. She had four eyes and four arms. Other than that, she wasn't much bigger than either of her unfused entities. If it hadn't been for the extra parts, she would have looked like just a normal pearl.

She was grinning, a touch madly. She wrapped all four of her arms around herself and closed her eyes.

"What's it like?" Mercy asked meekly from behind Treasure.

"Warm," the new fused pearl sighed. "We like it."

A crackling noise in the distance brought them all back to high alert.

"They're catching up again," Courage said. "We can't waste any more time, we have to get moving."

The pearls scrambled into the rig, the fusion pearl curled up on the far side giggling softly to herself.

"We're not far away now," Treasure said, beaming the map onto the roof of the rig. "If we can make it past the next outcropping we'll be safe..."

The rig shuddered; the ground underneath them was rough and getting rougher. Steven's teeth rattled so hard his jaw hurt. He peered back at the advancing troops. There were definitely fewer of them now, only a handful had squeezed past the rocks Opal had torn down.

The engine of the rig smelled of burning sulphur. They had stopped to let it cool, but not for long enough. The gears screamed and roared with every push over the harsh terrain. The only thing that quelled the rising panic in Steven was to think that the gems chasing them had vehicles that were under just as much strain.

The rig jumped a gorge and crashed onto the ground, so hard they all rammed their heads off of the roof. Courage gripped the wheel so hard Steven could see the metal buckling.

"She's burning too much fuel," Treasure said suddenly. Steven thought she was talking about Courage, but she was looking back at Pyrite.

Looking back himself was a mistake. Pyrite's vehicle was shrouded in smoke and flame, like something straight from hell. Her teeth were clenched in an unholy grimace. He knew, just looking at her, that it was no longer a recovery mission. Pyrite wanted them all dead.

A cable and hook clattered against the side of the rig, cutting through the door and pulling it off its hinges. The pearls crammed over to one side away from the gaping hole torn into the rig, but it was no good. When the second hook lurched towards the rig, it pierced Treasure's calf and ripped her clean out of the rig into the sand.

They had no time to stop, no time to go back for her, no time to do anything but watch in mute horror as Treasure sprawled in the sand, covering her head against the oncoming truck.

It all happened in a matter of seconds; Courage let go of the wheel, threw herself out of the rig, _galloped_ the few yards across to Treasure and scooped her up in one arm.

It was no dance. Not even close.

But all the same, their forms melted into each other, burst into waves of colour and texture and reformed, larger and stronger and more graceful than ever. The newly-formed fusion raised its fist and brought it down full force on Pyrite's rig. The resulting explosion was so fierce Steven could feel the heat of it from the rig.

When the smoke cleared, and as Garnet managed to bring the suffering rig to a stop, Pyrite's forces watched the fusion drop the Everlast's gem onto the ground and grind it into nothing under her feet.


	9. Chapter 9

**Fade Out**

 **Chapter Nine**

Looong author's note; an explanation as to where I've been. I took a bit of a hiatus for two reasons:

I fell down a very deep fandom hole for a fandom I hadn't been in since I was much much younger and it took up a lot of my inspiration. On top of my hectic working schedule I generally have only enough time for one, maybe two, fandoms at a time and this one sort of surged to the top. I'll be back making Steven Universe content soon enough, I hope.

I have been working on my original fiction for a long time, trying to get it print-ready. In the end I decided to go the self-publish route, that way I can concentrate on writing more and more often rather than waiting on letters from agents. I would hesitantly suggest that if you like my SU works you would probably enjoy my original novel, I work with similar themes, and the better I can do with my original work the more time I can dedicate to writing more original and more fandom content. I'm optimistically going to include a link here and I hope that it catches someone's fancy at least: dp/B07BGSPPBY

And now, the conclusion to Fade Out.

…..

It took the pearls just parsecs to agree that Courage needed their protection.

After that first awkward meeting, after Courage had been escorted out of the vault, Treasure explained the situation to the others in fast, concise gesture-speak. At first they couldn't quite believe it, no gem introduced to them had ever been trustworthy, but Treasure seemed certain. Moreover, if they let this Jasper carry on in her guileless way, she would be shattered in short order.

From inside the vault, they schemed. For all their frailty, they were experts at manipulation and it was easy to root out the gems that were set against Courage. When another Jasper with a slightly higher rank showed signs of plotting against her, Gift casually dropped a few incriminating facts about that gem into a conversation with Pyrite, and she was shattered the next cycle. When Sweetness heard that an underling Jade had been spreading rumours about Courage, she convinced her general, a Carnelian who had Sweetness as a favourite, that the Jade had damaged her during a visit. Carnelian picked a fight, and the Jade didn't stand a chance.

The other gems were easy to fool, but they all kept a nervous eye on Pyrite. She was notoriously fickle, the only gems she had ever liked with any kind of consistency were the pearls themselves, and only because they couldn't talk back or disobey her. Gems had been shattered in the past just for looking at her the wrong way.

One particularly rough cycle, Pyrite had gathered all of her generals in the antechambers outside the vault, and although she seemed to be in a good mood the way she occasionally glared at Courage had all of the pearls on edge. They were flitting around the room, 'entertaining' the guests, and in every spare moment they gesture-spoke their worries.

 _What's wrong with her?_

 _Nothing's wrong, it's just a bad cycle. She's been like this since Forecycle._

 _She was angry with Sneaks, but she's not anymore. She's turned on Courage._

 _They were on the same mission. Sneaks put the blame on Courage for the damaged hull._

 _Who was last with Sneaks?_

 _Mercy was._

 _Mercy, I'm sorry._

Treasure crossed over to where Mercy was hovering and slapped her hard across the face. Shocked, Mercy burst into tears, and as all the eyes in the chamber turned towards them Treasure gathered her into her arms.

"What's going on?" Pyrite called sharply. The pearls very rarely wept, but if any of them did it was usually Mercy.

"Her gem is hurting her," Treasure answered.

Still sobbing, Mercy clutched her gem with both hands. She'd picked up on the plan as fast as intended. Treasure's eyes shot towards Courage, who was looking concerned and rising to her feet, and gave her a mental warning to stay where she was. Courage, thankfully, understood the message.

Pyrite stalked over and pulled Mercy away, yanked her hands away from her gem. Mercy just sobbed harder.

"Looks okay to me," she grumbled.

"I think it's a hairline crack," Treasure said quietly, leaning in towards Pyrite meekly. "They don't show on the surface."

"Hairline crack?"

"Yes," Treasure nodded. "Charm had one before she broke, remember?"

As she'd expected, Pyrite's cheeks bloomed with fury. Charm had been a particularly beautiful pearl and when she crumbled Pyrite had every gem who had been with her in the last half-orbit shattered.

"Who was she last with?" Pyrite growled.

"Sneaks. Wasn't it, Mercy?"

Sniffling, Mercy nodded.

"Was Sneaks rough with you?" Pyrite asked, though they could already tell she was in a shattering mood.

Mercy nodded again.

Pyrite didn't say another word, she just grabbed Sneaks and dragged her from the room in front of the rest of her confused guests. The pearls sighed quietly to themselves, relieved.

They had bought Courage more time, but for how long?

…..

The vehicles had ground to a halt. The occupants gaped, looking from the fusion to the remains of their leader blowing away in the wind to each other. Pyrite's rig was a smoldering wreck, and the other vehicles weren't much better.

The fusion was huge, even by fusion standards. She wasn't as thickly muscled as Courage or as slender as Treasure, but had a strong athletic build with impossibly long legs and four supple arms. She had Treasure's long aristocratic nose and Courage's strong jaw, her skin was a pale rippled green and her hair was a thick cloud of forest-green curls. She had no weapon beyond her own powerful fists, and it was possible she didn't need anything more. Her enemies were too blown away by her to even try to attack.

The fusion turned on her heel and picked up what was left of the rig, along with the gems inside, and walked off with it. They crossed a gorge with a simple jump, climbed up a set of dunes and wandered in the general direction of the rising third sun.

After the smoke from the wreckage was a good distance behind them, they finally put the rig down and fell apart. The fusion's form burst and they ended up a few feet from each other, sitting in a daze in the sand.

"Holy crap, that was awesome!" Steven called, scrambling out of the rig ahead of the others.

Treasure and Courage just stared at him, struggling for words. The pearls descended on Treasure, running their hands over her hair, her arms, her back, looking for damage.

"I'm all right, don't fuss," Treasure mumbled at last, waving them away. "Courage?"

"Yeah, I'm okay," Courage exhaled.

"That was impressive for a first time fusion," Garnet mused (the relief was palpable in her voice.)

"Yeah, and not a moment too soon," Amethyst muttered, giving herself a shake.

"They had a clear goal in mind," Pearl cut in, though she was standing beside the pearls rather than the Crystal Gems. "That's all it takes, really."

"She's gone," Courage mumbled, stroking her gem. "She's really gone."

Steven was confused. This was a happy time, wasn't it? He would have thought Courage and the pearls would be ecstatic to have their enemy ground into dust. They didn't look happy. In fact, they looked more scared than anything.

"Yeah, she's gone!" Steven enthused. "She won't be able to bother you again. Unless her followers keep up the chase, but they looked pretty bummed out so I don't think so...so you can do whatever you want now, you can even..."

He trailed off when Garnet put a firm hand on his shoulder and a finger to her lips.

"Let it sink in for them."

Baffled, he let Garnet lead him away to an overhanging rock. There he sprawled in the sand with her and Amethyst, watching Amethyst fiddle with that water-gathering device. He couldn't help but notice Pearl stayed with the pearls.

"I don't get it," he said at last. "Why aren't they happy?"

"They probably are, deep down," Garnet told him. "But it could take them a while to realize it. They need some time."

The third sun was setting. Amethyst filled a bowl with water and Steven drank greedily. The air was full of smoke and dust.

He could see the pearls 'talking'. Treasure was leading the conversation, and Pearl's hands were fluttering to rapt attention from the others. A little shred of panic ran through Steven; having met with other pearls, would Pearl still be _their_ Pearl? Even having survived several near-death experiences, she was more interested in talking with these stranger pearls than making sure Steven was okay. That wasn't like the Pearl he knew, and it frightened him.

Looking for a way to take his mind off of what he knew was a selfish, childish notion, he got up and walked around the overhanging rock. Maybe there would be something new on the other side...

….nope. More sand. And a few little green things.

 _Wait, what?_

"Hey guys, look at this!" he called.

Garnet and Amethyst peered over the side of the rock.

"Is that...grass?" Garnet asked.

"I think so," Steven said, crouching in the sand and lowering his face to get a closer look. "I mean, it doesn't really look like grass from home or anything but it's pretty close."

Amethyst called to the others, and in moments they were all staring dumbstruck at the little green shoots.

"This is impossible," Treasure whispered. "Nothing has grown on this planet for hundreds of orbits!"

"But it _is_ growing," Gift said, poking at a sprout.

Pearl's gem flickered and whirred and shot a beam of light at the grass, scanning it carefully. Then she beamed a screen in front of the pearls with a lot of numbers and symbols on them.

"There's clean water under the ground, it's closer to the surface than anywhere else," she said. "And with the overhanging rocks in the area it probably missed the worst of the suns' glare. Your maps show that this area gets overlooked by the regular mission routes...the planet's trying to fix itself."

The pearls were stroking the leaves of the little plants thoughtfully. For a little while, they were all lost in thought. Then Courage broke the silence.

"We need to go. Tripcycle is coming up and we should try to get to the warp pad before then."

Just before they left, Gift gathered up on of the plants, root and all, wrapped in a torn piece of her skirt.

…..

The rig groaned and screamed as they pushed it to its limits. At any moment it felt like it was going to just collapse and throw them out into the sand. Steven kept up a steady stream of chatter to a mostly unresponsive audience.

"...Beach City has a whole bunch of these vacation houses, nobody lives in them for most of the year and they're pretty big so I'm sure nobody will mind you guys using them for a while until we can find you somewhere better...oh, there's the barn as well but it's not that great and it's pretty crowded in there..."

In his head he was already finding places for them in Beach City. Courage could probably help out on Yellowtail's boat, if he needed some extra muscle power. Gift would fit in well at the Arcade if he could convince Mr Smiley to let her work there. Mercy could help out at Fish Stew Pizza, Kiki would probably be happy with another girl around...

"...I mean, you don't all have to get jobs, you can probably just hang out 'cos you don't need to eat or pay bills and stuff, but it's going to be..."

He trailed off as the screaming rig finally pulled up to the working warp pad.

Well, 'working' was a hopeful statement.

It was glowing, which meant it was operational, but it was cracked and shooting sparks erratically. Steven's stomach dropped; all this way and all that pain for nothing.

All of the gems looked crestfallen, climbing out of the rig and staring down at the crackling warp pad, but Pearl scanned it anyway, from all angles.

"It's working," she said, hesitantly. "Just barely. I think one warp would kill it. Two at most."

There was a grim silence. They wouldn't all be able to warp at the same time, they knew that. The Crystal Gems needed to return home, but Courage and the pearls had been planning their escape for who knows how long. Pyrite's captives had fought hard to get there in one piece and succeeded, but the Crystal Gems were strangers on the planet and probably wouldn't last much longer.

 _We'll figure something out,_ Steven thought frantically. _Pearl can warp with the other pearls, then she can figure out a way to get us out. Or Garnet and Courage can, and then plot another course. They can get a ship and bring it out here..._

"We will stay," Treasure said. Her voice cut sharply through the late evening gloom.

The Crystal Gems stared at her in horrified silence, but the pearls and Courage looked peaceful, resigned.

"We can't just _leave_ you here..." Garnet sputtered.

"Yes, you can," Treasure said smoothly. "The warp will only take you. We did intend to warp off the planet, but our real goal was to escape Pyrite. We have done that, thanks to you."

"I'll protect them," Courage said, rising to her feet and standing behind Treasure. "There won't be another Pyrite. I'll make sure of that."

"Don't be stupid," Amethyst spit out. "This place is a dump! Why would you want to stay? We can figure something out!"

"We thought the planet was dead," the fused pearl said, and it was such a surprise to hear her speak Steven jumped. "But there are plants growing again. We can cultivate them."

"We can fix this place, at least on this side," Treasure assured them. "None of the other gems have ever come out this far. We will be quite safe. Some day we may even fix the warp pad."

 _No, we can't leave them._

But even as he thought that, Steven knew the Crystal Gems were ready to leave.

"We can come back for you..." he said, tears thick in his voice. "We can find a way back and you can leave, if you need to."

"Thank you," Treasure smiled beatifically down at him. "But I don;t think that would be necessary."

With a heavy heart, Steven went with Garnet and Amethyst to stand on the warp pad. Leaving them behind was bad enough, but he nearly screamed when Treasure reached out and stopped Pearl from getting on the pad.

 _No, you can't have her! She's ours!_

He could feel Garnet go tense beside him, and Amethyst's hand crept towards her gem for her weapon. But Pearl's fingers flickered in that graceful looping way of gesture-speak and Treasure moved back, with a gesture of her own. The other pearls matched it. Pearl joined them on the warp pad, and the light started to pull them upwards.

Courage and the pearls watched them float into the sky, until the planet vanished and the light hurtled them towards Earth. Steven looked over at Pearl briefly, and noted that she was weeping in a way he had never seen before.

…..

In the aftermath, Steven often wondered what had happened on that planet after they left. Garnet and Amethyst didn't like to talk about it, but he knew Garnet was looking for a way to track the planet down. Maybe one day they could hijack an enemy ship and go back for them. Or maybe by the time they did that, the pearls would have successfully grown plant life and made a proper home for themselves.

 _We'll see them again,_ he thought, always.

Pearl had been silent for days afterwards. She was better now, but still much quieter than Steven was used to. He did his best to cheer her up, and it worked to a degree, but he was now more aware that the pearls had filled a hole in Pearl that couldn't be filled with anything else. Gems could be distant, and even amongst gems pearls were so distant as to be unknowable.

 _We'll see them again. We have to._


End file.
